This 30-Yr-Old Is Walking From Kanyakumari To Kashmir To Highlight Issues Of Women Safety & For Women Empowerment

Srishti Bakshi has embarked on a walking mission spread over 260 days and covering 3800 km to highlight the issue of women empowerment and safety.

Thirty-year-old Srishti Bakshi was on the evening bus back home in Central Hong Kong, sometime last August, when she read a news item about a mother-daughter duo who was gang-raped in India’s Bulandshahar district. “It made me think that women are not spared even when they move as a family unit. I realised, this is an issue staring at us and denying it is insane. I wanted to direct my power and knowledge into doing something about it. And that’s how I decided to walk from Kanyakumari to Kashmir highlighting the issue of women safety and empowerment,” shares Srishti.

Her goal

Srishti is the founder of Arrow by Crossbow – a movement started for the on-foot journey. With over 110 workshops designed by the key partners, they are teaching girls, women, the Police, Zilla Parisads and the community at large about digital and financial literacy, health, hygiene, sanitation, leadership, knowing one’s rights and gender sensitization. Along with local volunteers, renowned muralist Poornima Sukumar is painting walls in 30 locations that Crossbow walks through, leaving strong social messages. The wall in Kanyakumari says, “Women also have rights”.

The workshops are planned in a way that they are helpful for women in understanding their rights, giving them digital knowledge and helping them become self sufficient. The children are being taught how to help the women in their home to spread knowledge and share information like teaching how to access the internet. Some of the women have learnt how to make small earnings using WhatsApp. Shrishti shares an incident where a lady in Hong Kong became a chef and is running a restaurant successfully by learning to cook by watching hundreds of videos on YouTube.

“Srishti is an Empower Woman Champion for Change 2016-2017. UN Women’s Empower Women Initiative is dedicated to empowering women to achieve their full economic potential by inspiring both men and women to become to become advocates, change makers and leaders in their community,” United Nations on Sristi’s work.

Support from locals

When asked about support from the locals on her journey, Shrishti mentioned two incidents. One, when the team was offered a few therapy sessions by the Madurai physiotherapist of the Indian Blind Cricket Team spotted. In another incident, a lady selling custard apples left her stall unattended on the highway as soon as she saw Shrishti’s car and ran to offer apples to her and her team.

“Before starting the journey we were prepared about the language barrier, may be people wouldn’t have understood our message. But as soon as we put up boards, people started joining. We have at least 1000 people on the road now,” said Srishti.

Preparation of the journey

“Before starting the journey, I had to prepare myself for two things – one is the journey itself and the second is personal capabilities. I started taking training in Hong Kong where I used to focus on weight lifting and CrossFit. In the initial days, the weight lifting started from 15 kgs and slowly and steadily it went upto 100 kgs,” shares Shrishti.

Shrishti got positive support from her family as well. Her father decided to accompany her on the journey. Her mother-in-law, who is 60 years old and a doctor offered to come along her for the walk. “Everyone was thrilled and extremely supportive”, says Shrishti.

You can be part too

Arrow by Crossbow has launched a mobile app named ‘Crossbow Miles’. People can download the app and can select any of the different causes. Anyone can join the movement by submitting their information on their website and the team will contact back. The only thing they have to pay is for the stay, since it’s a crowdfunding campaign.

Srishti’s message

Our movement is a community driven movement, which means that the more participants we get, the better it is. I would like to invite everyone to come join us; join the movement, in whatever way they can, even through the app. We are working very hard, to have in terms of lot of people who want to come as groups so that they can facilitate their movement with us. So, if more and more people want to come they should write to us so that we can go back and say “yes, people want us to do this. They want that change and they want to action that change.”

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Partner Story

Know Why This Small Town In Tamil Nadu Is In The Guinness Book Of World Records

Did you know there is a town at the southern tip of India that can be called ‘Heaven on Earth’. Its people realise the importance of keeping the environment clean.

Madukkarai Panchayat in Coimbatore district, Tamil Nadu, is the cleanest place in India, owing to around 50 women who wake up every day to collect waste from each and every household in the town. At 6 AM, the women set out to work with their green jackets on, hands covered in gloves and caps adjusted perfectly on their heads. Every morning they line up for the roll call. These ‘Green Friends’ are part of the solid waste management program supported by ACC Cement – Madukkarai.

Madukkarai, a small town at the tip of the country, is in the Guinness Book of World Records for the largest recycling lesson in the world. With the help of around 50 women, who are now called ‘Green Friends’, and a simple, scalable model, this town is leading the way for efficient waste management. #SwachhBharat

While most of us find someone to put the blame on, Madukkarai decided to take control in their own hands. The town has 8,000 households and a population of 42,000. 82% of the homes hand over garbage to ‘Green Friends’ every day. 1,440 tonnes of garbage is collected annually from the town of 18 wards and 107 streets.

There is a lot that we can learn from Madukkarai. One of the most disturbing realities that we face, despite which part of the country we reside in, is the similar dirt everywhere – garbage piled up on roadside, drains clogged with plastic bags and dogs chewing on the leftover food we have callously thrown on the streets.

We keep our homes clean; make sure that the floors are mopped every day. But why do we not share the same sentiment for our surroundings? We hardly realize that the street outside our home is as much ours as is anybody else’s. We are the ones who use these roads every day to commute. Madukkarai realized this and the importance of a clean environment for our health and well-being.

Guinness Book of World Records for the largest recycling lesson in the world

‘Green Friends’ collect household wastes in eight different bins for wet waste, kitchen waste, plastic waste, etc. This is then disposed in large bins kept in several parts of the town. Trucks pick up this waste daily and take it to the resource recovery park where the garbage is recycled.

The treatment center segregates the different types of wastes. The kitchen waste is converted into fertilizers and given to farmers at extremely low prices to use in cultivation of their crops. The plastic waste is processed to be used in the construction of roads, and also at the large ACC factory where it is used as fuel at high temperatures which does not even cause pollution.

Due to the efforts of ‘Green Friends’, the citizens of Madukkarai, and the municipality, there has been a 60% reduction in landfill waste over the span of three years. There has also been a 50% reduction in the vehicle movement to the landfill sites, 85% of organic waste is converted successfully into vermin compost, ample reduction in the use of fossil fuels, reduction in greenhouse gas emission to 60%, and substantial decrease in the spread of malaria and dengue among the people. Furthermore, barren lands provided for compost yard have been successfully converted into fully functional organic compost yard and non-recyclable waste is used as an alternative energy source for the cement industry.

Madukkarai’s citizens have also become more environment-friendly, with 30% of the households segregating the organic-recyclable waste at home.

What we can learn

Madukkarai has paved the way to the sustainable development of our world. They have shown us that is not impossible to keep our environment clean. All we need is to inculcate in us a concern for mother Earth. It is commendable that ACC is supporting Madukkarai in its venture and helping it stay clean.

We, as citizens of other towns, cities, villages and states in India, have a lot to learn from Madukkarai. We too can have a healthier life if only we care enough and practice our civil duties proudly.